Anybody want to swap seats with Tony Hayward?

[Just One More]

I'm just watching him getting a grilling in the USA. He is being ripped to shreds on live TV. What a smug, arrogant, slopey-shouldered piece of shit. 

He should fall on his sword right now

[Miss Creant Commander of the picklement and baking BAb(Hons)]

I do not have much sympathy for him JOM however25 years ago we had this....

The Bhopal disaster or Bhopal Gas Tragedy is the world's worst ever industrial catastrophes and occurred on the night of December 3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. At that time, UCIL was the Indian subsidiary of the U.S. company Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), which is now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company. Around midnight on the intervening night of horror December 2–3, 1984, there was a leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other toxins from the plant, resulting in the exposure of over 500,000 people. Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release.[1] Other government agencies estimate 15,000 deaths.[2] Others estimate that 8,000 died within the first weeks and that another 8,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.[3][4]
Some 25 years after the gas leak, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the UCIL plant continue to leak and pollute the groundwater in the region and affect thousands of Bhopal residents who depend on it,[5][6][7] though there is some dispute as to whether the chemicals still stored at the site pose any continuing health hazard.[2]
Over two decades since the tragedy, certain civil and criminal cases remain pending in the United States District Court, Manhattan and the District Court of Bhopal, India, against Union Carbide, (now owned by Dow Chemical Company), with an Indian arrest warrant also pending against Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the disaster.[8][9] Greenpeace asserts that as the Union Carbide CEO, Anderson knew about a 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal plant, which identified 30 major hazards and that they were not fixed in Bhopal but were fixed at the company's identical plant in the US. In June 2010, seven ex-employees, including the former chairman of UCIL, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by law. An eighth former employee was also convicted but had died before judgment was passed.[10]


Not much justice for the people that are continuing to suffer here me thinks.

[Snoopy]

I'm on Hayward's side. Just who do these jumped up Yanks think they are anyway? There are at least 5 enquiries going on right5 now. Some of the enquiries are of into possible actions of a criminal nature and  legal action may result. What was the poor b@st@rd supposed to say? He could have pleaded the 5th amendment on at least 80% of the questions asked but he didn't.
Point is, and he recognised it, the Yank Senators had already made up their minds and all they wanted was for him to say "Guilty to all charges" ~ nothing else was going to suit them and when they found they couldn't bully him into that they lost their temper.
There is no reason for this enquiry to be held at this time whilst other, far better qualified, enquiries are progressing and all the members of this senate committee are doing is trying to look tough and garner votes in their own up coming (November) elections.

The reasonable voice of the US as heard on other programmes that took the trouble to go out and speak to the people most affected by the oil was generally more supportive of Hayward than of their own politicians. I heard several "locals" all suffering from business collapse saying that they could not have wished for more from BP and that they too were p*ssed off with their senate hearings just trying to look and act big.

[Nick]

I'm with Snoops. They were all just posturing for the electorate

[Darwins Selection]

Were I in his position, an obvious scapegoat and certain to lose my job when, or before, it is all over, I should have had some sport with our xenophobic and semi-literate colonial cousins.

If you pay no heed to side-stepping and weasel-wording your answers and just use the hearing as a public platform to trip up and humiliate the questioners, you could have a field day.

Just putting a Brit with an Alan Rickman voice in the stand will have convinced the simple rednecks that BP is evil incarnate.

They should have had Stephen Fry or John Humphrys in the chair to put them straight. 

[Nick]

There is a "cultural" problem here too. He refused to emote. Had he beat his chest and shed a few tears they would have loved it 

[Uncle Mort]

I agree that these Congressional hearings are more about posturing than getting to grips with the issue. But let's not forget he is the CEO of a company that has a somewhat dubious record when it comes to safety and in this particular case appear to have cut a few corners to save a few dollars. This time they fucked up badly and once the problem is sorted he has to go.